Medical and Aviation Staff

Medical Team

Delivering safe quality patient care and being able to provide the life-saving interventions that patients need is our goal. Crew coordination and training is a big part of our patient care. Medical crews consist of one Flight RN/EMT-P and one Flight paramedic. After founding Life Flight in 1976, Dr. James “Red” Duke also served as the Medical Director until 2015. Dr. Joseph Love became the 2nd Medical Director of Life Flight in 2015.

The initial training of medical crew members is a phased process that usually requires about 8-10 weeks to complete. New crew members undergo an initial hospital orientation, an initial aircraft and safety orientation, in-hospital clinical rotations, day flight and medical orientation and night flight and medical orientation.

New crew member candidates receive a mid-term and final evaluation. If the candidates require any further training their orientation may be extended several weeks. Once candidates are deemed satisfactory and have met all initial training criteria they become full crew members.

Aviation Staff

Safety is a culture at Life Flight. Flight hour requirements for Life Flight pilots are well above the industry standard and pilots go through a rigorous extended training period before flying solo with crews. We are proud to have each aircraft fully equipped with TAS, TAWS, auto-pilot, on-board weather radar, and GPS. Each crew member is NVG aided for night flights. Pilots, mechanics, and medical crews are continually in contact and actively work with safety as the priority of every mission.